World class computing and information science research at Strathclyde...

The Strathprints institutional repository is a digital archive of University of Strathclyde's Open Access research outputs. Strathprints provides access to thousands of Open Access research papers by University of Strathclyde researchers, including by researchers from the Department of Computer & Information Sciences involved in mathematically structured programming, similarity and metric search, computer security, software systems, combinatronics and digital health.

The Department also includes the iSchool Research Group, which performs leading research into socio-technical phenomena and topics such as information retrieval and information seeking behaviour.

Abstract

Technological learning is crucial for mitigating the environmental impact of production through efficiency drives. Its occurrence is, however, constrained by weak management and policy regimes that inhibit competition, capacity building and investment flows. Analysis of technical efficiency trends in the Ethiopian manufacturing industry, conducted using efficiency models developed by the authors, shows scant evidence of technological learning, and confirms the hypothesis that industrialisation in developing countries correlates positively with environmental neglect. The results also suggest that there is significant scope for improving the technical efficiency of production and, hence, the environmental performance of industry through technological learning. The implications of the findings for industrialisation strategies and for the sustainability of the built environment are discussed. The fact that control policies aimed at mitigating the environmental impact of production are rarely implemented effectively in developing countries heightens the case for technological learning as a strategy for improving the environmental performance of industrial production in these countries.